


a country of shadows

by feralphoenix



Series: a heart is no king's throne [5]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Benevolent Player, Borderline Personality Disorder, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Nonverbal Frisk, Sharing a Body, Spoilers, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-11
Updated: 2018-05-11
Packaged: 2019-05-05 05:19:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14610243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feralphoenix/pseuds/feralphoenix
Summary: Frisk and Chara contemplate the void.





	a country of shadows

**Author's Note:**

> _(look at life through the wrong end of the telescope_ – but our wishes are like tinder)
> 
> title is a line from the song "lavender burning" by half waif.

The Core is a giant slide puzzle and its pathways have no railings. A conveyor belt ferries huge chunks of ice that you think you saw a wolf making in Snowdin, huge chunks of ice that drop into its glowing depths; when you lean over the edge you can’t see them reach the bottom. If there _is_ a bottom. This whole place smells sort of dry and staticky and like the room in your elementary school that has all the giant computer towers that run its network. Chara says it smells like ozone and that it’s giving them a headache; you asked them how they can get a headache when you don’t have one considering that you’re sharing the same body and they told you waspishly to shut up.

Now, as you lean as far as you can without risking toppling, they say just as waspishly, “I’m starting to worry that you have a fetish for long drops, Frisk. Not to yuck your yums or whatever, but can you please fucking not?”

 _That weird monster we saw,_ you reply instead of dignifying that with an actual answer, _I wonder if what they said about that Gaster person was true. That when he fell into the Core he just… stopped ever having existed, got erased completely._

“Don’t,” Chara says, and there’s this really weird note to their voice that you can’t place. “I don’t want to find out, so don’t. If you wanna talk SCP creepypasta cryptid stuff then okay, theorizing, fun, sure?? But from a safe distance.”

 _I know it’s morbid,_ you say, taking one step back from the edge so that you can go up on tiptoe and crane your neck to try to squint for something in the weird ethereal guts of the machine. _And I have friends and people who care about me now, Toriel and Papyrus and Undyne, and the nice monsters I met. And it would be horrible to Alphys since she’s probably still watching, and it wouldn’t be fair to you to drag you along by force. But I just can’t help but… think about it._

Where do you go when you’re erased? Does it mean nothingness, a cessation of suffering and thought, final peace? Would it mean that every horrible thing that’s ever happened to you is immediately rendered null and void, and you could stop feeling like an open wound every minute of every day, either experiencing every possible human emotion all at once or feeling nothing at all? Would other people be safe from the badness you know deep down you’re capable of? Would it mean that you’d be free from ever being a burden?

“Stop,” Chara says, loud and firm, and you almost stumble realizing that you’ve been obsessing so loud they must’ve felt it. Their voice doesn’t betray them but there’s a sour salty taste like sweat where your minds are conjoined. It’s the flavor of panic so real and immediate you take another step away from the drop by reflex. “Please just stop. Can we _please_ go somewhere else.”

You manage to tear your eyes away and look back up at the path. The open bridge crosses another path with a wall along its side, and there’s a way forward with _two_ walls even, so you walk to it in deliberate steps and sit against the left-hand one, curled up.

 _I’m sorry,_ you tell them.

“It’s not,” Chara says, and there’s a long pause. “It’s not what you think. It’s just, the way you were thinking about it made me really, really want to do it.”

They don’t put the rest of it into words, but Chara has a thunderstorm for a heart and you can hear it booming in them if you put the ear of your own heart gently to where you’re connected. They’re very sure that they’re the worst thing that’s ever happened to the underground, and to everyone they’ve ever known—you can sort of hear the echoes of a child’s voice from a dream that you and Chara shared back in Waterfall, but that’s all you can grasp; that same black scrawl as before blots them out.

They’re very sure that they’re the worst thing that’s ever happened to _you,_ which is—all right, they are awfully mean sometimes, and being connected to them is horrible. But being connected to _anyone_ like this would be the same kind of horrible, and Chara doesn’t hit you like your parents or ignore you or starve you or make fun of how hard it is for you to talk or be racist and gross at you. They’ve never _killed_ you like plenty of monsters have. So thinking of it like that is actually sort of arrogant—at least that’s your opinion, you decide just a little louder in case they can tell you’re eavesdropping on their feelings and can sense you making a judgment about it all.

“It wouldn’t be very responsible to run away from the consequences of my actions like that, anyway,” Chara says, almost gently—so they _could_ tell and _did_ hear you; your ears burn a little. “And besides, Gaster’s not _completely_ erased. That weird monster still remembers him, and they said he’s ‘listening’, whatever that means. So that means that he’s still here somehow but can’t interact with this world at all, which? Let me assure you, it _sucks._ And the stuff that he made, like the Core, is still here, so it’s not like he got retconned out of the world either. Yeah, I get it, _I wish I’d never been born_ sounds melodramatic and all but it’s a fucking mood, it’s just… jumping in there wishing for that isn’t going to make it happen. Whatever happens next will just be worse.”

 _I know. I know. This world doesn’t want to let me kill myself._ You pick at the laces of your boots. _It’s just, it’s not easy to stop wanting to._

“If it makes you feel any better,” says Chara, “suicide is overrated. Dying is just as horrible as living, it’s just sort of concentrated so it’s all the horrible all at once.”

_Orange juice with extra pulp._

“Exactly. I wish Papyrus or Undyne would pick up when we call them in here, or that Alphys would at least start shitposting again,” Chara goes on.

 _Yeah._ You wrap your arms around yourself, curl up, close your eyes. You’re not sure whether you’re trying to hug Chara or whether you want them to take the arms so that they’re hugging you. A hug sounds really nice right now, but you think it would be a really bad idea to go back through the Core with its lack of safety rails when you’re feeling extra vulnerable to the siren call of the void. But you don’t want to keep going and have to face more assassins and more danger and whatever Mettaton is probably up to right now, either. _This is probably how cats feel when they get stuck up trees._

Chara goes distant for just a moment, the way they do sometimes, and irritation snaps in you because you need them right now, you thought they needed _you_ right now, and it’s petty but you feel cheated. But under the snap is a flicker of hopefulness, because usually when Chara goes distant it’s because they’re listening to whoever it is that gives them directions, and maybe that whoever has a bright idea.

“Okay,” Chara says at last. “You remember the elevator that Alphys said would take us straight to the end of the Core, right?”

 _Yeah,_ you say.

“It got powered down and all, but we should be able to find the other side once we get through here. And once we find it, it ought to work; that’s how these things usually go. So what we’ll do then is, we’ll leave the Core for a while and take a break. Find something else to do, visit Papyrus and Undyne, take a nap, whatever you want. We do have to keep going eventually, but it’s useless to push ourselves like this, we need to be able to relax for a while first.”

 _That makes sense,_ you tell them. _But what if Mettaton is in the way?_

“Then I guess we’ll have to deal with him. But I have a hunch that we’ll have a chance to turn back and make sure we’re ready first.”

 _Video game logic again?_ you ask, smiling a little.

“Well,” Chara says, a bit blustering, “it’s always been true so far, hasn’t it?”

Actually, they’re right, so you have to give them that. _Okay. I’ll give it a try._

“Good,” Chara replies, and they sound _relieved,_ and the warmth that spreads through you upon realizing that is almost even _better_ than a hug.

 _Thank you,_ you tell them, and as an afterthought you add, _and um, the other one too. Can you tell them I say thank you?_

They go quiet for a long time, so long you get fidgety; at last they say dubiously, “Well, I _tried._ I’m not sure if it really got through.”

_Thanks for trying anyway, though._

“Sure.”

You slowly gather your legs under you and try to hold on to the wall to pull yourself upright. It’s not that easy to do because this part of the wall is smooth, but you manage it. Very firmly you do not look back at the way you came, but you still hesitate.

_Chara?_

“Yeah?”

_Do you think there’s anything we can do to… well, help Gaster?_

“I don’t know,” Chara says. “We can’t even tell if he actually wants to be helped. But we can at least keep this in the back of our minds, I guess. We can still remember him.”

That’s… not great, but you guess it’s better than nothing. Maybe it’s silly to want to help someone you’ve never even actually met before, just heard of, especially since you can’t even figure out what to do to help the monsters, or help yourself.

“It’s not silly to care,” Chara says. “And we literally just decided how you’re going to help yourself, in the short term at least. Maybe you can’t do everything right now, but you can at least start with the things that _are_ within your capabilities.”

You didn’t really ask for the editorial, but if you _have_ to be connected at the soul to somebody else so that it’s impossible to really be a hundred percent private, it’s nice that Chara’s at least trying to use their powers for good.

“Uh, thanks, I think…?” they say.

 _You could at least PRETEND like you’re not listening in,_ you complain as you take a step forward. Your whole body’s filled with jittery energy that you think probably comes from them; as desperate as they are for answers they’re terrified of what they might find. This self-care break is something they might need even more than you do, and there’s something kind of horrifying about that. Wanting to outrun that thought propels you forward as much as determination and the promise of rest do.

“If I ever figure out the secret to foolproof brain privacy while we’re literally sharing a mind, I will be first in line to tell you what it is,” Chara drawls, their side of the brain treacly with desperation underneath their humor.

 _And if I figure it out first, I’ll tell you right away, too,_ you say.

“Sounds like a deal.”

The end has got to be close. You start to jog.


End file.
